Mapping her musical street cred literally takes an atlas, and pursuing her calling has taken her across the globe, connecting with an army of hearts and minds that can’t resist her honest writing and soul-stirring voice. Small was born with one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks voices that makes it clear she was given a gift, but she has tempered it into a sublime instrument of the highest caliber through her dedication to the hours behind the keyboard and the miles on the odometer. Growing up in Wisconsin, Small's musical focus and drive was strong enough to send her to a performing arts high school in Milwaukee. She played keys in a jazz group and sang in several choirs while there, and her list of influences grew from the classic country of her childhood to include names like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Aretha Franklin. Small continued her musical immersion after high school by attending Berklee College of Music in Boston. She was steeped in new music and studying theory and technique, but it was a summer job at Fiesta Texas in San Antonio that rekindled the joy of performing for crowds of people and taught her the musical work ethic that doing three shows a day six days a week can bring. A stint playing in a New Orleans piano bar and then five years in Austin, Texas further sealed Small’s fate as a natural entertainer with the full calendar to prove it.

After spending two years as a member of Berklee's Voice Department Faculty, Small relocated to Nashville in 2001 and has called it home ever since. While singing on recordings and in bands for the likes of Peter Frampton, Wynonna Judd, Radney Foster, and Martina McBride, Kira started honing in on her unique sound. “Being such a vocal chameleon had kept me working for sure, but I needed to find out which voice was actually mine,” she recalls. She recorded two albums with producer Bruce Dees (James Brown, Ronnie Milsap) with a decidedly R&B bent, and Small found a home for her fiery, energetic vocal style. Her latest studio album, Raise My Voice, features Motown and Muscle Shoals studio veterans wrapping their groove around Small’s original compositions as her exquisite voice more than holds its own with these legends of R&B.

While her R&B big band sound had great impact on disc, Small had yet to figure out a way to make touring sustainable as well. Almost by accident, she and her husband, well known bassist Bryan Beller, began playing house concerts as a duo and soon found it was not only a practical way to tour, but a highly successful and musically gratifying venture as well. With word spreading, Small and Beller have been able to tour across the nation playing house concerts and listening rooms that lend themselves to Small’s intimate songwriting with a message. Their album Live at the White House captures both their married and musical chemistry along with the between song banter that makes every live show unique. At each live show Small desires, “To leave people feeling inspired, feeling heard, liberated to get up and dance, feeling saucier than they might normally give themselves permission to feel.”

Currently working on a new album and keeping up with a busy touring schedule in both America and Europe, Kira Small has finally found the sweet spot where her influences and her original voice as a writer combine into a musical life she is passionate about. She has also grown her voice into an instrument that moves crowds with its disciplined abandon and subtle nuance; listeners know they are hearing something special. As Grammy award-winning songwriter Mike Reid (“I Can’t Make You Love Me”) puts it, “You sound like a neat glass of single malt in a world of Michelob Ultra."